Writing While Under the Influence of Emotions
As a child, I remember one of the worst chores I had was having to read out loud for 30 minutes every day. I hated it! I hated reading, let alone out loud. I think I must have had dyslexia because of how hard it was to go from one line to the next or read a word correctly. I often had to re-read the sentence for context. It was a struggle and reading out loud made me hate to read even more. Subsequently, I never asked for books for Christmas, I hated going to libraries, and if an activity had to do with a lot of reading, you could count me out.
Not in a million years, did I ever think I would be an author and honestly, it is still a struggle. However, as an adult, there are some things that are worth writing about, that are worth sharing and that is why I started writing about my story. I had a few hurdles that I needed to overcome, one was that I have never written anything longer than a paper for my college courses. How am I going to write a book?
I created a chronological timeline, sort of a memory jogger to come up with specific topics I could expand on as I went along. Sometimes one memory would lead to another until I had a pretty good list started. I expanded on each topic but after a while, I started overthinking it and began doubting myself and asked why would anyone want to read this story? And all of a sudden, I was derailed by fear. It was like fear sat itself down on my desk just staring at me, challenging me with, “you are right, who would want to read your story?” How am I ever going to be able to reach my goal of writing a book? I have to do something about this fear.
It’s a constant battle to work with your emotions and for me, fear is not a stranger, I know it well. When I worked through the question, why would anyone want to read this story, I was able to eliminate the self-doubt and changed it to be more constructive, such as, “How can I make the story that someone will pick up and refuse to put down?
A few years had gone by and my writing was still suffering. I would say that I was just too busy being a single mom and working 10 to 16-hour days at times, but the reality of it was, I didn’t make the time to do it! That’s it, I didn’t make the time to do it. That is the reason. I can intend to do it all day long, but if I don’t make the time, it is not going to get done. I didn’t apply the motivation to keep writing, until recently, when a good friend of mine asked me to be a co-author for a book series she was working on about emotions. This was right up my alley and what I have been working on in my personal life. The series is called The Girl Behind the Fence and it is co-authored by other women who have all struggled with the emotional topic of each book. They discuss methods on how they overcame it, what they did to get through it. It is women helping women find resolution and heal. I agreed and went back to my story and started writing down everything I could think of about how the current topic, which at the time was Anger, affected me.
At first, I was overwhelmed by how many ideas I had just puked onto paper. I call it that because brain dump just doesn’t cover it. This is where it really got started and I was writing more than ever before. Everything that came to mind, I wrote, but I blew the doors off of sticking to the Anger topic. I needed to keep writing, but also focus so it would flow and make sense. I needed rules, the first rule had to be to write every day. This could be anything, from the topic itself, a memory, or a piece that I could blog. The second rule was to keep it constructive and third, don’t let fear live rent-free in my head.
As I started streamlining my stories, that old friend of mine, fear, makes a comeback now and then, and it takes a seat at my desk, but now I don’t mind. I’ve learned that fear is a good emotion for us to have because it has the ability to prevent you from being in a bad situation. It is also a reminder. My fear has changed focus and instead of being afraid of what others may or may not like about what I write, I am afraid that if I don’t write my stories, someone out there that is going through similar events will never know they are not alone. Now, I write to use my voice, to be the ambassador of change, the voice of children, the sanity beacon for women, the teacher of Emotion Commotion and how it is all in how you deal with them.
I do not worry about the on-the-spot memory that popped into my head as I am writing, because it was triggered by recalling these stories and I take the time to write that down or make a note, right then. Otherwise, you may lose the thought, forget it or can only remember a piece of it. Write what your brain signals you to write in that very moment. If you can’t write, turn on your phone mic and record a brief scenario that will help you remember later.
I am sharing this because I know that there is nothing stopping you from writing, except for yourself. You either decide to write or not to. There are no excuses because they are just reasons or obstacles you put in front of you to justify not doing it. It’s not the reasons fault that you are not writing. It’s just a hurdle, so jump, climb over it or crawl under it if you have to, just do something that moves you closer to your goal. If you think you can’t, you may need to have a conversation with your fears.
—
Dawn Endria has set out to write about her own experiences of being erased from her father’s life and he from hers for over 44 years or 16,060 days. They had a loving relationship before she lost him again two short years later. Her message is that there is no time to waste and that parents are not replaceable. She is sharing the traumatic events of abandonment, parental childhood abduction, being forced into a new instant family, enduring sibling violence and the long-term effects of the physical and emotional abuse as a result of it all. In memory of her father, she is now an Ambassador for Erasing Families and is using her voice to bring awareness around the world, to other erased families, to give them hope that they may reunite with their erased loved one also.
Social Media:
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
